178 THE LAST CRUISE OF THE MIRANDA. 



The virtues of the men are very much magnified at the 

 expense of the women, and the wife regards her husband as 

 her superior lord and master. Few men are jealous of their 

 wives, but most wives are jealous of their husbands. The 

 natural inbred admiration for men causes the women to treat 

 all men affectionately. In this respect they resemble Oriental 

 women, anticipating man^s every desire, studying very care- 

 fully his needs and his follies. Chastity is quite unknown, 

 and fidelity is uncommon ; men treat the failings of the 

 women with indifference — wives are exchanged and new 

 attachments are made as a most natural and necessary func- 

 tion. Both men and women are prized not for beauty, phys- 

 ical force, or wealth, but for their ingenuity in the arts of 

 life. There is among them a large idle and non-productive 

 class, but this is not criminal or dangerous, as is the rule 

 among us. 



The product of the hunt furnishes the natives with food, 

 fuel, and clothing. The Danes supply them with some un- 

 necessaries, such as tobacco, coffee, sugar, salt, superannuated 

 biscuits, cloth, etc. ; but the people would be much happier 

 and healthier without these things. This is particularly true 

 of tobacco and coffee, for there seems to be something in the 

 atmosphere which forbids the use of these stimulants and 

 makes them quite as destructive to ambition, respectability, 

 and health as alcohol does among our workmg classes. 



At their feasts there is much eating and merrymaking, but 

 the time devoted to them is brief, and the fun never ends in 

 fighting ; but there is sometimes an exchange of wives, and 

 more or less free love. Their life is essentially one of period- 

 ical wealth and poverty, of boundless engorgement with alter- 

 nate starvation, but they move about from day to day, and 

 from month to month, with no care for the future — happy 

 alike in famine and in luxury. 



My companions, Messrs. Walsh, Dewell, and others, have 



